Comments on: Kernel Panic in RHEL 5http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/itanswers/kernel-panicking/
Sun, 02 Aug 2015 08:47:57 +0000hourly1By: rechilhttp://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/itanswers/kernel-panicking/#comment-71931
Thu, 24 Dec 2009 05:01:41 +0000#comment-71931A kernel panic is a computer error from which the operating system (OS) cannot quickly or easily recover. The term applies primarily to Unix-based systems and to Mac OS X. In other systems, the equivalent of a kernel panic is known by slang terms such as blue screen of death, sad Mac or bomb. In Windows 3.x, this sort of malfunction was called a general protection fault.

A kernel panic produces a message or set of messages on the computer display. This information can be useful to technicians in diagnosing and resolving problems but it means little to the inexperienced user.

Kernel panic can be triggered by an inappropriate attempt by the operating system to access or write to memory. Sometimes kernel panic can be caused by software bugs or malware. Common hardware causes include failure or improper installation of random-access memory (RAM) chips, hard disk damage or data corruption, a defective microprocessor chip or incompatible device drivers. Most modern distributions including Debian uses loadable kernel module for ext3 file system. So to read ext3/ext2 file system kernel must load ext3 kernel module (ext3.ko).

This module is included in an initrd image. If an initrd image is missing or that image does not include suitable kernel modules to access the ext3 filesystem on the partition, an error message (Linux Kernel panic: will be displayed to you.

To solve this problem you need to use mkinitrd script that constructs a directory structure that can serve as an initrd root file system.
So see what messages r given and write, if u till now couldn’t resolve the problems.

If seen during boot, it often means that the root filesystem couldn’t be found and/or mounted. This is usually caused by a filesystem corruption (boot using the RHEL installation CD #1/DVD and run fsck against the partition that represents your root filesystem) or a hardware issue (check in the host’s BIOS to make sure that expected IDE/SATA drives are visible, or on your host’s SCSI/SAS/RAID controller to make sure all installed disks are discovered).